


Be With Me Always (Take Any Form)

by sometimes_i_am_lola



Category: Shadowhunters (TV), The Shadowhunter Chronicles - All Media Types, The Shadowhunter Chronicles - Cassandra Clare
Genre: Death, F/M, Immortality, Not Canon Compliant, Reincarnation, Sacrifice, Violence, finding each other, i don't even know what to tag, the old guard inspired
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-29
Updated: 2021-01-10
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:15:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 16,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28394487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sometimes_i_am_lola/pseuds/sometimes_i_am_lola
Summary: "I love you, and I will love you until I die, and if there is life after that, I'll love you then."Clary has lived longer than she can remember and died too many times to count. Somehow, she will always find him.
Relationships: Clary Fray & Meliorn, Clary Fray & Raphael Santiago, Clary Fray/Jace Wayland, Magnus Bane & Clary Fray
Comments: 6
Kudos: 24





	1. Both War and Woman

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so this fic is actually almost done, it's gonna be kind of short, though. I just had this idea after watching The Old Guard for the millionth time. I hope everyone likes it. Lmk.

“You really got your bell rung there, huh?” The voice is firm but lyrical, even though it sounds slightly muffled. Almost like a Seelie’s voice but not quite. Jace is still shaking his head clear, trying to regain his composure as he lays on his side, propped up on one arm.

He sees motion and hears the sounds of fighting out of the corner of his eye and he’s finally able to shake himself free of the disorientation caused by getting hit by a rogue vamp. It had managed to get a lucky hit in when he’d gotten distracted. And he’s pretty sure it’s also powered up on something.

The Institute has been getting information about some kind of supernatural steroid, a cocktail of demon blood, angel blood, and who knows what else. They’ve yet to come across any of the Downworlders using it but it was bound to happen.

Standing up, he catches sight of a girl.

She’s wearing tight black pants with a short leather skirt and black over-the-knee boots with a thick, flat sole. Her bright red hair is done in what looks like intricate braids that form a fauxhawk on the top of her head with the rest of the length braided and twisted into a knot at the nape of her neck. The bottom half of her face is covered in black from the tip of her nose on down.

A thick white line goes vertically down her chin and two thin but bright blue lines go from the corners of her mouth to her jawline. The top half of her face is painted bone white with thick black ringing her eyes and blue lines slash across her brow, eyelid, and cheekbone on the left side, resembling claw marks. A half circle of blue follows the line of her brow and around to her cheekbone on the left.

A tight black shirt covers her upper body and a tight leather vest of some sort covers her back and chest.

On top of her head sits a ringed crown made of what looks like small bones and her fingers are tipped with black claws.

And she’s dual-wielding kindjals better than most Shadowhunters he’s ever seen. And he’s pretty sure she’s not a Shadowhunter. She moves differently, she looks differently.

As he watches her one on one fight with the last remaining vamp they’re both surprised by a blur of speed heading straight for her and a small blade slipping into her side, low down where her vest doesn’t cover.

The girl grunts with pain as she stabs the vamp in front of her with one dagger, dragging the other across it’s throat, deep enough to leave a gaping wound that sprays blood over her hair and face.

Before he can reach her, she’s spinning towards the vamp behind her, both kindjals moving in an arc before slashing identical lines across the vamp’s throat and stomach. More blood sprays over her and by the time she turns to look over at Jace, he’s left with his mouth hanging open and his eyes wide as both vamps gurgle at her booted feet.

“Wait.” He calls out as she grips the blade in her side but she ignores him as she rips it free and wipes it clean before sliding it into her pants pockets. She wipes the blood from her kindjals, too, and slips them into holsters that seem to sit at her lower back.

“You okay?” She asks him as if she’s not the one with her own blood dripping down her side and another's blood half covering her painted face.

“Shouldn’t I be asking you that?” He asks her as he looks pointedly to the place where her hand is pressed tightly, blood seeping between her pale, clawed fingers, exposed by her fingerless leather gloves.

She laughs, a sound like chimes, and slowly eases her hand away from the wound. And he can see that her hand and glove are tacky with the drying blood but it’s no longer seeping from the wound.

“All better.” She tells him with a smile in her voice as she lifts the vest and her shirt slightly to show him smooth, unblemished skin under the smeared remains of her blood.

Jace blinks at the sight, but doesn’t have long to contemplate it before he hears running feet and remembers that Izzy and Alec are both on this mission with him and had gotten tied up with a couple of Shax demons.

“I’ll be seeing you.” The girl says as his brother and sister approach him from behind and a purple portal opens behind her. She starts walking backwards into it as Alec nocks an arrow and Izzy starts to crack her whip, ready to stop the stranger from leaving.

But, between one blink and the next, she’s turned and rushed through the portal, disappearing along with the purple glow. Izzy’s whip pops at empty air and Alec drops his stance with a frown.

“Who, or what, was that?” Izzy asks with a curious look towards Jace.

“She wasn’t a warlock.” Alec points out. “I don’t think.”

“No.” Jace agrees. “She wasn’t.”

*

She is...old. That’s one thing she knows for sure.

Like most, she does not remember being born, but she does have memories of her childhood, vague recollections that get fainter with every year, every decade and century, that passes. There’s the scent-memory of freshly turned dirt and tall grass. The salt of the ocean. Somewhere on a northern Ireland cliff is her birthplace, a small place that didn’t even have a proper name then, not that she can remember anyways.

She thinks that she remembers dying for the first time, though she’s done it so many times since then that she can’t be sure if it was the first time. For all she knows, she could’ve died many times as a toddler, from many different things.

She’s pretty sure she was young, far too young, in the time that she thinks was her first time.

What she does remember is that she was scrubbed with rough material and cold water before her hair was cleaned, untangled, and braided down her back.

She remembers the scratch of rough material on her pale skin and the cold stone she was laid upon. She remembers drinking something bittersweet before a sharp stone was stabbed into her stomach.

She remembers her body feeling too heavy to move.

She almost remembers young and innocent Céibhfhionn.

The thing that most don’t know, don’t consider, is that time blurs memories, makes them fade and makes them jumble together.

So, she doesn’t know if that was the first time.

Which is why, after a time, she'd taken to keeping journals of sorts. It’s all written in a form of Sumerian shorthand that only she understands. It was the first written language that she learned and by then, she was at least eight lifetimes old, she thinks. It’s so hard to remember the passage of time.

But, she writes down her names, her deaths.

Her first is Céibhfhionn. Sacrifice. Impalement.


	2. Girls Like Her Were Born In A Storm

Jace can’t get over what he had seen. He asks around at the Institute and even goes through the files but since he has no name to put into the search criteria and only the vaguest description possible, he can’t find a single shred of information. It’s more than a little frustrating. Even Izzy and Alec try to help, both just as interested in learning about the stranger as he is. Although, their reasons probably have more to do with their duty as Shadowhunters.

Personally, he just feels this strange pull to find the woman.

“Maybe Raphael Santiago knows.” Jace says with a sigh as he’s walking back home from a mission, Alec and Izzy on either side of him. They’re still dealing with Shax demons and rogue vamps. “She was fighting vampires, after all.”

“I doubt that the head of the Brooklyn clan will sit down and talk to us, especially if she works for him.” Alec tells him reasonably. Alec is always reasonable. Always calm and collected. “And we can’t just bring him in for an interrogation.”

“Well.” Izzy says, drawing out the word softly, almost like she doesn't really want to say anything. “There might be someone I could talk to.”

“Who?” Jace asks before Alec can say anything. He thinks that maybe sometimes Alec likes to protest just for the sake of protesting.

“Meliorn might know something.” The way she says it implies that she definitely knows that Meliorn absolutely knows something.

“Why would a Seelie knight know anything about vampire affairs?” Alec asks sceptically.

“They’re sort of...cousins, I guess. Or something like that.” Izzy says with a shrug as if that’s not a bit of a bombshell in itself. A seelie and a vampire being cousins. “Though, Meliorn is obviously a lot older.”

“Obviously.” Alec and Jace both say, both of them raising an incredulous brow at their sister.

The relationships among the Downworlders are usually kept quiet, played close to the vest. It’s not something most Shadowhunters are privy to, not even other Downworlders usually know. Relationships can be used against you, if a person is willing to go that far.

“Look, you can’t go spreading that around.” Izzy tells them hurriedly. “I’m pretty sure I wasn’t ever meant to find out but Raphael came to see Meliorn when I was over there once. I didn’t overhear anything important except that. And only because Rapahel called Meliorn cousin before he knew I was there. And Meliorn couldn’t lie when I asked if he meant that in an actual familial way. But he refused to answer any other questions after that.”

Jace is in awe of Izzy, much like he always is. She so seamlessly crosses over into both worlds without a thought, it seems, and manages to have her own intel and cultivate her own connections that she obviously doesn’t flaunt. She knows how to keep valuable information for herself until it’s needed.

There will never come a time when anyone considers Isabelle Lightwood useless. She will always have a card to play up her sleeve, it seems.

“But how is that even possible?” Alec asks her. “Raphael’s writ says that he’s only about eighty, give or take a few years. And we don’t have much info on Meliorn but he’s old for sure. He knew our grandparents, sort of. Not to mention, as far as we know vampires don’t breed and none of the Downworlders mix together like that.”

“They mix a lot more than what we see.” Izzy says with a pointed look. It’s true, though, most Shadowhunters have a tendency to ignore Downworlders at best and hate them at worst. And the Downworlders, for the most part, steer clear of Shadowhunters. Jace really doesn’t know much about how the Downworld network works when it comes to personal relationships, though he knows a bit about their professional relationships. And he knows a few of them personally.

“Then we should talk to Meliorn, see if he knows anything about the girl.” Jace finally says. “You think he’d meet us at Hunter’s Moon?”

Hunter’s Moon is a Downworlder bar and Jace figures that it’ll help make Meliorn more comfortable.

“I don’t know but it probably wouldn’t hurt to ask.” Izzy tells him with a soft shrug and a small flip of her long black hair.

*

In the beginning, when she was still Céibhfhionn but years after that first barely remembered sacrifice, she met a young man. He was a few years older than her, with long golden hair and strange, dual colored eyes. He was tall and handsome and named Jaka.

They fell in love quickly and easily but it took only an instant to see that he was not like her. He was a warrior and where her wounds, should she ever receive any, healed seamlessly, his did not. Despite the strange runes that he was given in visions to paint on his body.

Then she learned that while she would come back from a fatal wound, he would not.

Their home was attacked by an evil creature that drove a bone spike through her chest. And as she’d lay bleeding out, gasping for air, she’d watched the same creature impale her love. He’d fallen next to her, so close that their bodies touched and their blood mixed together on the floor as they held hands and their eyes closed.

She had awoken with a gasp, no wound in sight and curled next to Jaka, weeping and screaming over his pale and lifeless body, holding his dropped weapon in a deathgrip. It’s where the people of the village found her and where they’d dragged her from him, driving her from the village with fear in their eyes.

The next day she dropped Céibhfhionn.

And became Boudica.


	3. Half Goddess, Half Hell

Meliorn won’t set up a meeting with them. It shouldn’t be a surprise but it somehow is. He even takes to avoiding Izzy and not answering any of her messages, fire or otherwise. The reaction itself lets them know that he is keeping something from them. Whether it’s about the girl or not is uncertain. Nevertheless, it’s frustrating. Jace is nearing the end of his patience which isn’t that long to begin with.

The rogue vamps are still an issue and now there are rumors about the Circle making a comeback. The leader, Valentine Morgenstern, had previously been thought to be dead but recently, they’ve found a few dead bodies of Circle members and questions are being raised about his death now. After all, there was never a body found.

Unfortunately, it’s not something that’s been talked about in nearly twenty years, the topic having been forbidden by the Clave.

Currently, Jace is inside Pandemonium with Alec and Izzy. They’re split up in different areas of the club, keeping an eye out for Meliorn or Raphael. Or any rogue vampires or demons.

As Jace watches from his seat at the bar, Magnus Bane, the owner of Pandemonium and the High Warlock of Brooklyn, approaches two men in dark business suits that don’t fit into the atmosphere of the club. They’re only a few seats down from Jace but his hearing rune is activated so that he can listen for mentions of Raphael or Meliorn.

“Circle members are not welcome in my club.” The warlock says in a low, dangerous tone as he faces off against the two men.

“The Circle is disbanded.” One of them says and Jace narrows his eyes. It’s not exactly what they’re here for but it is their responsibility to keep an eye out for Circle members, ex or not.

“I don’t care.” Magnus replies firmly. “Get out.”

Both men step forward as if to start a fight and Jace moves to stand up. It is his duty as a Shadowhunter to protect Downworlders and to keep the peace. And despite his recent distraction, he takes his job very seriously.

Before he can complete the move to get up, a redhead is standing next to Magnus. He’s pretty sure it’s the same redhead he’s been looking for.

It’s hard to tell, though, since he didn’t get a good look before and he can’t exactly get one now. It’s dark and her face is painted differently than before and he figures maybe she wasn’t anticipating a fight.

Her red hair has thick stripes of white and smaller strips of black going through it. The sides of her hair is done in small braids against her scalp with small silver hoops threaded through them. The top half of her hair is pulled back into one thick braid and left to fall in loose curls down her back with the rest of her hair.

The silver hoops in her side braids are connected to a thin silver chain that goes across her forehead. A slightly thicker chain falls under it, just above her dark red eyebrows.

There’s an unfamiliar rune in the middle of her forehead and small lines are underneath it, halfway down the bridge of her nose. From above her nostrils to the bottom of her top lip is painted dark blue all the way across her face. Her bottom lip is painted black and a thick black stripe runs vertical down her chin. Her bright green eyes are ringed in thick black.

Black leather pants, knee high black boots, and a black shirt with sheer gray stripes running vertically down it complete her look. It’s interesting but nothing less than what he’d expect from someone hanging out with Magnus.

The thing that is unusual is that he can see that there’s a short sword down her back and a kindjal tucked into the outside of each boot. He can see that her fingers and lower arms are covered in leather gauntlets, too, now that he looks closer.

“You should go.” She says in a sneer, her top lip lifting to reveal her bright white teeth, and Jace knows it’s her. He wouldn’t ever get that voice out of his head.

The two men seem to assess her as they take a step back. That surprises Jace because they’re supposed to be Circle members and despite the fight he’d observed with the rogue vamps, the girl is small in stature.

“Boudica.” One of the men says in sudden recognition and Jace frowns because he’s never heard that name. But they seem to know her. Or know of her, at least.

Magnus frowns and glances down at the short woman next to him. “That’s one I haven’t heard in a while.”

“Me, either.” She says with a half-grin that’s anything but happy.

While they’re talking, the Circle members take the opportunity to hightail it out of the club, the woman’s eyes following their retreating forms and Jace gets the sense that she’ll catch up with them later. Jace takes the opportunity to approach the warlock and his companion, hoping he can finally get some answers.

“I guess this is you seeing me again.” Jace says to the woman that the Circle members had called Boudica.

*

Boudica was determined not to lose anyone else the way that Céibhfhionn lost Jaka. She had learned her lesson in blood and tears. It took time, but she found someone willing to teach her how to fight.

And she began to see how legends were born.

She found battles and battlegrounds and fallen men. She fought viciously, never losing steam as long as her fury burned within her. She was stabbed and cut and broken and she died over and over and over.

And still she fought. And she searched.

Searched for monsters. For the thing that took Jaka from her.

Somewhere along the way, she acquired a small unkindness of ravens and they picked meat and bone from the enemy, dropping gifts of bone and silver at her feet. She made a dark crown of black feathers and white bones and wore it as she cut down anyone in her way.

She saved the beaks of her fallen ravens and made claws for her fingers. She painted her face in blood and death and went mad with grief and anger, always calling out for her Jaka.

Swearing vengeance for a life cut short.


	4. Fire for Skin, A Storm in Her Soul

There’s the strangest sense of deja vu as he looks into her emerald green eyes, made all the greener for the ring of darker jade on the edges and the black kohl smeared darkly around them. It’s not like he’s done this once before, but like he’s done this countless times, over and over. Faintly, like an echo of a long forgotten dream, he swears he hears the clang of swords meeting and the flap of feathered wings, the sounds of battle cries.

“Boudica.” Jace says on a sighing breath, not quite a whisper but heard nonetheless. The woman’s gaze turns sorrowful, green eyes filled with a deep, deep pain, before it clears and her delicate features are suddenly set in stone, a slightly haughty and distant look on her face. It’s nearly enough to make him feel small as he stands in front of her, not quite, but nearly. He wonders if he offended her somehow. And if he can make it up to her.

“That is not my name.” She says in a clear tone, enunciating her words carefully. There’s the heat of anger to her words and he frowns. Because the pain is still there, though he can tell that she’s trying her hardest to mask it. And something else, some articulation to her words, like a forgotten accent.

“Clary.” Magnus murmurs carefully as he lays a gentle hand with purple painted nails on the woman’s slim shoulder. Something tight seems to leave her small frame and her shoulders loosen visibly, her gaze softens.

“Is there something you need, Shadowhunter?” The woman, Clary, apparently, asks him after another moment.

“I’ve been looking for you.” He tells her honestly, though he’s both surprised and not that she seems to know what he is. And while he’s being honest, he can admit that he’s been looking for her because she’d struck a chord deep within him, not only because of her apparent knowledge of the Shadow World.

“Why?” She asks him and it feels like a test of some sort, even as he catches the barest hint of old and new grief in her eyes.

A test that he desperately wants to pass because he’s not sure that he’ll get another chance. It feels strangely like she’s slipping through his fingers, even as she stands in front of him. He wants to reach forward, to dig his fingers into her top, into the flesh and muscle beneath, to grip her tightly. He wants to wrap her up in his arms, keep her with him and never let her leave his side, to be out of his sight.

But she’s not something to trap, to cage. It’s not a good idea for anyone to try, he somehow knows, not even him. She’s wild, more wild than any creature he’s come across. And he knows that keeping, loving, a wild thing can be dangerous for everyone involved.

Sometimes, he feels the remnants of a wild thing in his chest, beating to get free, to break out of its cage and run.

It’s when he’s at his most restless, his most reckless.

Standing in front of her now, he feels that wild thing starting to claw, trying to reach the surface of him. Trying to reach her.

And he still has no idea what to say about why he has been looking for her. Except then he kind of does.

“How could I not?” He finally asks. “How can I not know you?”

Her eyes widen almost imperceptibly but he catches it and wonders why. There is something to this woman. She is someone to him. And he doesn’t know how or why.

“I need to go.” Clary says as something over his shoulder catches her attention. But he doesn’t dare turn away from her in case she disappears into thin air, for good this time.

“Wait. How will I find you again?” He asks her, risking laying a hand on her forearm, curling his fingers around the leather that keeps him from really feeling her.

She looks down at his hand for a second and he can’t see what’s in her eyes but he wants to, he wants to see what she’s thinking, what she’s feeling. He wants to know.

“I guess you’ll just have to keep looking.” She tells him as she looks back up at him with something close to a smile.

*

She leaves Boudica behind at some point, moving from place to place and name to name, but her ravens always stay, a far different generation than the ones from the battlefields but still of the same blood. She became Andraste, eventually, but kept her crown and her claws. She had no scars on her skin, only on her soul, so those are her physical reminders of all the things she has done, what she has seen, what has been done to her.

It was in a small village on another continent, she thinks, unsure, that she saw him, so many lifetimes after that first that she didn’t know if she was remembering him correctly.

He had introduced himself as Cadeyrn, her handsome and tall Jaka with his strange eyes. She had introduced herself as Andraste. There was the whisper of “I know you.” coming from his lips. She had asked how and there was no answer. But, there was “I’ve been looking.” and when she had asked why there was “I had to.” He’d had those same runes and she’d had her same skin and they’d had their same love.

But that time, she was better able to fight with him, to protect him from those monsters that would see him dead. He was surprised at her battle prowess, in awe of her ravens that she couldn’t bear to send away.

That time it was people accusing her of evil deeds that ended them. Different monsters, ones she had not known existed before then.

They were hanged side by side. He died. So did she. She came back. He did not.

She escaped and became someone else once again.


	5. A Hurricane Does Not Run From the Rain

Clary slips her arm from under his hand, slipping through his fingers like smoke, and starts carefully slipping backwards on her feet. Then, she turns away, quickly taking a few strides and it’s not long before she disappears completely into the crowd. He’s not completely surprised because she’s actually quite small, something he hadn’t realized until he was standing directly in front of her.

The top of her head barely reaches his shoulder. Without her thick-soled boots, he figures she would probably reach his collarbone, maybe lower. And he’d been able to wrap his whole hand around her forearm when he’d grabbed her and his fingers had overlapped by quite a bit.

A large hand landing on his shoulder has him tensing before he recognizes the person it belongs to as Alec. That must be what had chased Clary away. She doesn’t seem to be a fan of other people. Actually, she doesn't seem to be a fan of his, either. But, at least she stops to talk to him for the most part. And she doesn’t seem to dislike him, so there’s that.

She just seems...hesitant.

“Was that her?” Izzy asks as she moves to Alec’s other side, her tone curious and a bit anxious.

Magnus had seemingly disappeared into thin air as well and Jace can’t help but wonder how he does it. It’s probably some warlock trick. Maybe he’d helped Clary fade from sight as well. But, somehow, Jace doubts that.

There’s something about her that makes him think that every bit of her skill is hard-earned. So, whatever she’d done to melt into the crowd and remain unseen was all her.

“Yeah.” He finally tells Izzy as he looks over at her and he can feel the smile forming on his face already.

“Well?” Izzy asks with a slight roll of her eyes and an answering smile forming on her own lips. Impatient as usual.

“Her name is Clary.”

“Is that all you found out?” Alec asks in a slightly grumpy tone.

“Pretty much.” Jace tells him because he’s still not ready to mention that strange pull, that strange sense that she’s already something to him. It’s confusing enough without having anyone else try to weigh in on what it could mean.

And he doesn’t want or need any of this getting back to the Clave.

For now, that’s just something for him and only him. If Izzy and Alec hadn’t seen her that night with the vampires, if he hadn’t been using his Shadowhunter connections to find her, he thinks that he may have never told them. At least, not at first.

He thinks that maybe he would’ve kept this one thing for himself. Until he found her and figured out what this connection he felt was. He’s always heard that Shadowhunters only fall in love once and that it’s forever but he’s never been sure that he actually believes that. He’s seen too many Shadowhunters date around, get married, get divorced.

The one true love thing had just never seemed very realistic to him but now, he’s starting to wonder.

But, this connection, this pull, feels a lot like what he’d always managed love would be like. Except it’s so deep, so heavy inside of him. It’s in his bones, in his flesh, in his blood.

He can even feel it on his skin.

*

Aoife had lived deep in the woods, on her own, her ravens as her only companions. It was in a small, one room cabin, set into the side of a cliff to almost resemble a cave dwelling. She lived there long enough for another legend to start. Several generations made claims of haunted woods, of a witch that was both protector and enemy. The word witch had given her pause, remember Cadeyrn and Andraste. Remember the feel of the rope, the way it bit into her skin on her wrists and neck.

The area she had chosen as hers was filled with demon nests and dark, feral creatures. She had given them the choice to leave, change their ways, or die.

Children had come to look for her home to make themselves feel brave. Others had left offerings in the hopes that she would leave the village alone. She would have anyway, but it was nice to receive the occasional gift of clothing, food, and wine.

In return, she would occasionally leave her solitude and sneak into the village, leaving gifts and tokens for those willing to take them. Animal skins and furs for the winter months, vegetables from her garden, simple things for a simple village.

And when a group of men with circular scars on their necks came to the village to make trouble, she donned her crown and claws, she called upon her ravens, she whistled for the wild wolves of the deep forest that had come to eat from her hand, and she destroyed those men.

That time, the village did not chase her away, they did not kill her. Nor did they try to worship her.

They let her be.


	6. She Rises Like Athena

Jace hasn’t caught sight nor sound of Clary since that night at Pandemonium. Although, a few more dead Circle members had shown up around the city. And he’s pretty sure it’s her doing.

The killings are brutal, the bodies broken and sliced up. It’s obviously personal for her. Jace just can’t figure out how or why. She looks too young to have been around when the Circle was active but then, so does Magnus and Jace knows that he’s about four hundred or so.

But she’s not a warlock, not that he can see.

And, she’s not a vampire, either. He’s pretty sure, anyway.

If she was Seelie, her blood would have been green.

Werewolf is another option but she’s not that, either. She most likely would’ve changed shape to fight the vamps if that was the case.

So, he thinks that she’s human but she can’t be mundane. She’d healed too fast for that and she has the sight. She’s not a Shadowhunter because no rune had helped her heal. It had just happened.

With a sigh, Jace finishes climbing the fire escape of the large apartment building. He’s made it all the way to the roof and sits on the edge, looking out over the city, all lit up for the night. A sound catches his attention and when he turns to look, there’s a massive silver wolf with an all white face standing across the roof from him. And it’s not a werewolf but an actual wolf.

Jace frowns as he tries to figure out how the animal got up here. And why it’s in the city in the first place.

Although, he’s heard of the mundanes keeping some pretty strange pets. Like tigers and stuff. Which seems just wrong, to take something so wild and try to mould it to fit a life it was never made for. Jace loves animals, but that love extends to letting them be animals.

Holding a wolf hostage in a city like Brooklyn seems a bit like stealing it’s soul.

Finally, Jace reaches a hand out, just to see what will happen. He’s been close to some crazy stuff in his life but nothing as wild and simple and pure as this. And he just can’t pass up the opportunity to at least touch this animal.

Surprisingly, the wolf moves closer, it’s tail swishing from side to side slowly. Once it reaches him, it sits down, it’s massive bulk somehow a surprise but not at the same time.

Pressing his hand into it’s fur, he feels the softness of it and the warmth beneath. He can feel it breathing, in and out, it breathes heavily but steadily.

“How’d you get here, huh?” Jace asks the animal, knowing it can’t answer but not really caring.

“She followed you.” A familiar voice says from the dark.

Jace very carefully doesn’t move, not wanting to startle the wolf or the woman.

“Clary.”

It looks like she materializes out of the shadows. She’s wearing all black once again but her hair is down, falling in wild, untamed curls, and her face is free of any kind of makeup or paint that he can see.

And he has that thought again. Holding a wolf hostage in a city like Brooklyn seems a bit like stealing it’s soul. She’s not a wolf but the sentiment applies. He can’t see anything holding her for long. Not with force, at any rate.

“How?” He asks, tone confused.

“She has her ways.” Clary replies with a grin, the softest he’s ever seen her look.

He stays quiet as she approaches closer, finally taking a seat on the ledge, the wolf between them.

“We found the bodies.” Jace tells her, barely glancing at her, hoping not to scare her away.

“Good.”

“So.” He holds himself carefully as Clary presses her hand into the wolf’s fur, their fingers nearly touching. But not quite. “What do you have against the Circle? What’s your deal with them?” Jace finally asks, wincing as Clary’s face closes off a bit.

Silence falls and he starts to think that maybe she’s not going to tell him. And that’s okay, he figures. He doesn’t like to talk about it, either. About the way Valentine killed his father.

But she doesn’t move her hand, either, letting their fingers stay nearly touching.

“They killed my husband.” She finally answers him, her face half in shadow.

Jace is startled by her answer. She looks far too young to have a husband and The Circle has been quiet for going on twenty years now.

“Your husband?” Jace asks her softly, wanting to be gentle with her, with her feelings. But they need all of the information they can get to avoid them. To stop them.

“It was a long time ago.” Clary says with a soft smile that does nothing to hide the pain in her eyes. Emerald eyes that look like glass with unshed tears making them shine.

“How long?” Jace is compelled to ask her. He’s reminded that looks can be deceiving and this woman could be much older than she looks.

“A very long time.”

*

She was Emer, with her ravens and her wolves, when Jaka showed up on her doorstep as Adrastos. She lived on the place between field and forest, outside of another village. The moon was at it’s highest point and she was sharpening her blades.

Emer had opened her door after hearing the booming knock. She was met with a kiss, being swept up into her lover’s arms without a word. As he’d placed her back on her feet, he’d grinned.

“I remember you.” He’d said and she’d rejoiced at having her Jaka back, even if he’d been renamed Adrastos. He had memories, of her, of them, of their lives.

That time, they had managed to marry and live for many years. It was happy until it was not, as seemed to always be the way with them.

Men had come. Men with strange but familiar burns on their neck in the shape of circles. They had stabbed her as she slept, waking her with a gasp. She had laid helpless, unable to do more than fall from the bed and crawl after them as they’d grabbed Jaka and dragged him away.

She’d dragged herself after them, feeling herself getting weak, feeling her blood drain from her body. She’d felt the scrape of dirt and rocks against her skin, giving her new, small wounds that didn’t even matter. She’d screamed after them, cried, called out his names, all of them that she’d known.

He’d fought, with his hands and feet bound and being dragged by the rope on his wrists, he’d fought. He’d bled and cursed and snarled and looked at her, watching her, the whole time.

By the time she had dragged herself to him, the men stood watching. Watching as his lifeless eyes stared wide at her, hand reaching for her with his last bit of strength, having not once begged or cried.

It was so much like that first time as she dragged her body to his and lay over him, uncaring of the bloody, wet ruin of his chest and stomach.

Somehow, his perfect face had been left untouched by blood or gore and she’d pressed her cheek to his and screamed out her pain and anguish, her rage. It was the sound of a wounded animal, feral and mad. Her heart and soul had been ripped from her messily.

As those men had grabbed her hair and pulled her head back, she’d vowed to kill them all. It was her last promise as they’d dragged a blade over her throat and her blood had sprayed over her Jaka, coating his still perfect face in her red, red blood.

They’d dropped her body atop his and left them there. It’s how she’d woken and how she’d stayed, as her ravens circled and her wolves howled.


	7. Beware; For I Am Fearless, and Therefore Powerful

He wants to do something, anything, to take that look off of her face, out of her eyes. He’s not sure what to do, though. He wants to touch her.

Carefully, not wanting to startle her, he slides his hand through the wolf’s fur and over her fingertips, over her fingers, over the back of her hand. Jace lets the palm of his hand rest over the back of Clary’s hand, his larger hand curving, cupping around hers. She doesn't move, she doesn’t so much as twitch or glance in his direction.

“If you would like, if it is comfortable for you,” Clary starts, for the first time sounding less than sure of herself. “You can get your Shadowhunter friends and we can talk about the Circle.”

Jace considers her words. On one hand, they need all of the information they can get on the Circle and its members. On the other, he doesn’t want to cause her any more pain.

So, he tells her that. “This seems like a painful subject for you. I don’t want to make that worse.”

“The pain that they have caused me is not going to get any better or worse by talking about them.” Clary tells him with a shake of her head. “What’s done is done. All that’s left is taking care of the ones that did it.”

“And by take care of?” Jace asks, though he’s pretty sure he knows.

“Kill.” Clary nods, her eyes finally meeting his. And there’s no doubt, no hesitation. He should’ve figured because of the bodies, but somehow, he hadn’t figured her for the cold-blooded type. The dead Circle members haven’t been killed in cold-blood. So, maybe she’s just comfortable with it pretty much being premeditated murder, the planning is all cool, calm, and collected, the literal execution is brutal and full of rage.

“Okay.” He says with a nod.

And that’s how they end up going to Magnus’s loft, meeting Alec and Izzy on the corner of the block before Magnus’s. Alec doesn’t look happy to see Jace walking down the sidewalk with Clary but he doesn’t say anything until they’re all inside the loft and sitting in the living area.

“What do you know about the Circle?” Alec asks her, his voice serious and a little bit suspicious.

“Alec.” Izzy hisses over his shoulder and he’s surprised that she attempts to reprimand Alec’s attitude.

“The Circle has been around a lot longer than Shadowhunters know.” Magnus tells them with a look towards Clary.

Alec and Izzy start to protest but Jace holds up a hand and they both stop, which is a bit surprising because they rarely listen like that. But he rarely tells them to shut up, either. Not seriously anyway.

“The Circle predates Shadowhunters. The Shadowhunters that call themselves Circle members don’t even really know their own history. It’s not really their history, anyway. They kind of, stole, or rather, adopted, certain ideals.”

Jace gets distracted as he watches Clary leave the room, her shoulders suddenly ridgid, her spine stiff. It makes her movements jerky.

“Would you mind checking on her?” Magnus asks Jace and before he can even really nod his feet are carrying him across the room and to the hallway she’d disappeared down. He can faintly hear Alec protesting but then Magnus is talking again and it’s a sufficient enough distraction.

He doesn’t know how he knows, but he knows that the second door on the right is the one that Clary had gone through.

Knocking gently, he hears a muffled “Come in.” and turns the knob easily, sliding inside and closing the door behind him. He falters when he sees Clary in a black tank top and her black jeans, her feet bare. She’s pale, he notices.

Her hair is still down and wild around her head and torso. She looks delicate, almost fragile, in the bright overhead light. Except, under that pale skin, there’s muscle tone that belies her slim frame.

There’s a squawking caw and Jace flinches a bit as a large raven drops from a perch on the wall to land on the dresser next to him. It steps forward a few steps and moves it’s head from side to side as it studies him.

Carefully, he reaches one hand out towards it, his fingers getting close to it’s head. And then it’s rubbing its head into his palm like a cat. It’s strange. First a wolf, now a raven. He has no idea what to expect next.

“She likes you.” Clary says, looking at the bird instead of him.

“She have a name?” Jace asks her softly.

“I’m sure she does. She just hasn’t told me yet.”

It’s a weird thing to say but Jace accepts it. Clary herself seems pretty strange.

“Magnus asked me to check on you.”

“He worries too much.”

“You looked kind of bothered when you left the room.”

Clary sighs and moves to pace the floor. With a jolt, he realizes that she’s unsettled. Her steps are careful and precise still, though.

Before he can think too much on his decision, Jace steps right into her path and she bumps into his chest. Without a second thought, he wraps his arms around her, feeling her stiffen for a moment before she’s suddenly returning the embrace. Her face presses into his chest, her cheek resting against him, her ear right over his heart.

And he squeezes slightly, tightening that embrace as he feels her shake, shudder, and then finally let go. She melts against him and it doesn’t feel like the first time. There’s some kind of sense memory in the back of his head, trying to crawl forward, as he curls around her, his larger frame surrounding her as she tries to burrow into him.

Jace closes his eyes and just holds her tight.

*

By the time she had come across Magnus, she was Doireann and she was starting to get tired of this life of hers. The trouble and the fighting never seemed to end. Neither did the running and hiding and pain. And losing Jaka over and over again in different lives.

She had come across plenty of the inhabitants of the Shadow World at that point. Mostly, she avoided them, learning her lesson after a Shadowhunter had stabbed her in the back, literally, when he’d seen her come back to life after being nearly ripped in half by a werewolf.

Back then, Shadowhunters had been something of a new concept and there hadn’t been many of them. Jaka had been something similar, she was sure, but different all the same. Only Jaka seemed to reincarnate and he had come thousands of years before Jonathan Shadowhunter.

Fortunately, she had managed to find a warlock willing to wipe that Shadowhunters memory of her so that she didn’t have to kill him. It had come at a price but nothing she wasn’t willing to pay.

But, back to Magnus. When she had met him, he was just a child. Literally. He was only eight years old and his mother and step-father were both dead. He was terrified and didn’t fully understand his power, only that he had it.

It was only after she proved that she couldn’t die that he had become more comfortable being around her. He had taken quickly to her ravens, and he’d taken to her wolves even more quickly.

They had travelled all over the world and looked for warlocks to help him learn anything about himself and his abilities. It was when his father found them that the real trouble began.

Asmodeus did not take kindly to her, especially when Magnus recoiled from the demon and all that he stood for. The boy might have had demon blood but he didn’t let it rule him, didn’t let it define him. Not even in the beginning.

Together, they had found a way to banish Asmodeus back to Edom.


	8. A Thousand Armies Couldn't Keep Me Out, I've Come To Burn Your Kingdom Down

Something changes with the hug. Jace doesn’t know what changes, isn’t even sure it’s the hug that does it, but that’s all that he can come up with. Clary moves her head back so that she’s not pressed to his chest but she doesn’t unwrap her arms so neither does he.

Her hands slowly slide around his waist, from his back to his stomach and he can feel his muscles twitch and tighten, jumping. Her hands are firm and sure but slow and gentle. It’s familiar, not the way she touches him but the way it feels. All of her is familiar to him and he doesn’t understand how. Or why.

Before he had time to think too seriously about it, her hands start to slide up his chest and towards his neck, sliding up the sides of his throat and cupping his jaw and the sides of his face. She stares up into his eyes and he can’t find it in himself to look away from her. He stares into the depths of her green eyes as she stares up into his eyes.

He’d always been a bit self-conscious about his eyes. Both are a clear, pale blue but the left one has a spot of brown. It’s almost a triangle, taking up a little less than a third of the color but noticeable against the pale blue.

When he was younger, he’d tried to use a glamour to make his eyes match, to make them both blue, but it never stuck. He’d hated it but didn’t know what else to do. He just wasn’t comfortable enough with contacts, especially with as often as he fought. The contacts could be uncomfortable for him at the best of times, during a battle with a demon was not the time to be distracted by anything, much less discomfort for vanity’s sake.

So, he’d forced himself to get used to them, his strange eyes.

Now, with Clary holding his face so gently in her small and calloused hands, looking into his eyes like they hold the answer to every impossible question, he doesn’t feel like they’re so strange after all.

After what seems like an eternity of silent debate with herself, she lifts onto her toes, the move smooth and effortless and serving to remind him of gracefulness. The lift is slow and controlled. He’s watched Isabelle bounce onto her toes plenty of times to press kisses to cheeks and give hugs. He knows that’s a bit easier than this slow move that Clary does.

But then he realizes that she’s trying not to spook him. So, he uses the arms around him and tightens them on her back, pulling her body closer to his at the same time as he helps to hold her up on her toes.

A smile graces her lips at the move and he starts to smile back but then she’s pressing her lips to his. It’s soft, a slow press, and his eyelids drift down, shuttering his gaze until he can’t see anything but he can feel her.

He feels her body pressed to his, her hands on his face, her mouth on his. He presses back, tilting his head the slightest bit to get a better angle, and lets their mouths slot together like pieces of a puzzle. And again, it’s so familiar. A piece of him that he hadn’t realized was broken feels like it’s coming back together.

The sensation makes him gasp a bit and it breaks the kiss, Clary putting her feet flat on the ground once more and stepping back from him. He blinks rapidly as he tries to clear the flash of  _ something _ he’d seen. It was so brief that he can’t be sure that he saw anything, not really.

And then there’s a knock on the door and Clary’s moving towards it and opening it before he can say anything, before he can process what just happened.

“Excuse me,  _ bibi _ .” Magnus speaks up from outside of the door where Jace can’t see. “But, I believe his family is getting restless.”

Jace moves from his spot and towards the door, coming to stand behind Clary as she stands there looking up at Magnus.

“Thanks, Mags.” Clary tells him with a softness to her tone that Jace has yet to hear until now. If asked previously, he would’ve been unsure if she was capable of that tender tone.

“Have you…?” Magnus trails off speaking and somehow Jace knows that isn’t characteristic of the warlock. He doesn’t understand how he knows, but he does.

“No.” Clary answers him easily, shaking her head slightly and making her hair swish and sway, the curls bouncing around. “Not yet.”

Jace reaches up and presses a hand to her shoulder blade, pressing in slightly as he slides his hand up a bit and curls his fingers over her shoulder. He’s not sure why he does it except that she sounds like she needs comfort and he wants to be the one to comfort her.

Her shoulders don’t tighten at the gesture and he takes that as a win. He steps closer, not quite touching but close enough that she can feel him. He feels like it’s another win when she leans back into him, her back pressing into his stomach and lower chest.

It’s such a casual and intimate move, something that people with years of familiarity between them would do. It makes Jace look down at the top of her head and she presses her head to his chest and looks up at him, meeting his eyes with her own.

This new level of comfort is strange but it’s like once they’d touched, once he’d been allowed to hold her, he can’t seem to stop himself from continuing to touch her. And she seems content with that, as far as he can tell.

“I think they’d like to talk to you.” Magnus tells Clary.

“Well, let’s not keep them waiting.” She replies as Magnus steps away from the door and starts walking back up the hallway.

Clary takes a step away from Jace and turns to the side to look up at him. She doesn’t say anything but she holds one hand out and he takes it easily, lacing their fingers together. She pulls him out of the room and he closes the door behind him, letting her lead him back up the hallway and to the living area where Alec and Izzy are still sitting on one of the sofas.

He sees them both look at his fingers interlaced with Clary’s but they say nothing. Alec narrows his eyes and Izzy raises a brow, but they don’t say anything at all.

*

Magnus was all grown up and travelling on his own when she had moved back to Ireland, into the area where she’d been born. It had felt like the right time. She had not been back since she was Céibhfhionn. There was no one left to remember that girl from so long ago and so she had felt comfortable living in that village near that cliff once again.

Her name was Fiadh and she lived there for a decade before she saw him again. His arrival had nearly coincided with Magnus’s visit and she was not sure that it had been a coincidence.

Once she’d told the warlock her story, in full, he’d begun trying to figure out why she lived and why Jaka did not but seemed to reincarnate. And he’d told her that he would try to find a pattern of reincarnation. If he came back more than she knew, Magnus had hopes that she would continuously seek Jaka out.

But she wasn’t so sure because she seemed to lose him every time she found him and she had been wondering for a while if that was her fault. If she let him be, maybe he could live a full life on his own, free of early and brutal deaths.

When she had confessed her thoughts and feelings, Magnus had not known what to say so he had said nothing. It’s always better than false reassurances.

So, when they had shown up so close together, Jaka going by the name Chryses and Magnus still Magnus, she had been suspicious but cautiously happy.

And that time, when the men with the circle scars on their necks had shown up, they’d fled in the night, Magnus portalling them to an unfamiliar cabin in unfamiliar woods.

Eventually, their luck ran out and the men caught up to them with Magnus nowhere in sight.

That time, they kept their hands laced together, eyes locked on each other’s, as one man, the leader, drove a sword through her back and out Jaka’s. It had pierced them both through the heart, pinning them together as they gasped out their final breaths, hands going slack as the blade was removed and they both fell to the ground underneath them, falling together and remaining still as the men that had gathered left.

And all she had been able to think is that if she had just let him be, had sent him away from her, with Magnus, perhaps she would have been able to fight the men off, perhaps she would have been able to kill them all, even as they tried their hardest to kill her.

So, that is what she vowed. She would not love him, would not tell him who he was, what they seem to be to one another, until every last man with a circular scar on his neck is dead and gone from this world.

And then she would drive them from the next world, until there was nothing left of those men, nothing to threaten her love, her life.

That is what she did.

She woke up, she buried her Jaka once more, and she began to hunt.


	9. Vengeance Is In My Heart, Death In My Hand, Blood and Revenge Are Hammering In My Head

The living area is effectively transformed into a war room as Meliorn Sunglow, the Seelie Knight, and Raphael Santiago, the head of the Brooklyn vampire clan, both come to Magnus’s loft to discuss the, apparently revived, Circle.

Jace finds himself nearly entranced by Clary’s knowledge of the Circle, the original and the new, and the way that they operate.

And while they stop holding hands and don’t really touch, she remains in touching distance. No matter how they move around the room, he can always feel the heat of her near him, even as she paces, her movements nearly a dance.

He can see the lean muscle rolling under her skin. She’s all sleek and stream-lined in a way he can’t not notice, even in a room full of people.

Clary walks with her back straight, her shoulders back, her head held high. A rolling gait that has nothing to do with trying to be sexy but it’s sensual all the same.

And it keeps entrancing him, the way she moves.

It’s distracting enough that Alec and Izzy keep having to get her attention, an amused smile on Izzy’s face, an annoyed frown on Alec’s. Raphael and Meliorn just kind of occasionally glare at him until Clary gives them firm looks that makes them stop for short periods of time.

They seem protective of her, and she of them.

Magnus, though, keeps flirting with Alec, who keeps blushing and stuttering and stumbling over his words. Izzy seems to be dividing her attention between Meliorn and Raphael when they’re not glaring at Jace.

“So, what you four seem to be saying is that Valentine Morgenstern is following some strange vendetta against Clary that started thousands of years ago with a totally different group of people and just kind of got passed down along with their racist ideology.” Alec sums it up pretty easily but Clary, Magnus, Meliorn, and Raphael all look at each other in silent communication.

Jace instantly knows that they’re keeping something from them, from him. It’s some kind of gut feeling, similar to how he feels like he knows Clary, has known her forever, it seems.

“It’s more like I have a vendetta against them.” Clary answers. “The Circle’s vendetta was, is, against my husband.”

“Is?” Jace asks her, not wanting to name that feeling in his chest because she’d said her husband was dead, the Circle had killed him. But she’s talking like he’s still alive.

There’s a pleading look in her eyes as she glances at first him, then Alec and Izzy, and he knows she doesn’t want to talk about it. Knows with every fiber of his being that she’s asking them to leave this alone.

“Why do they have a vendetta against him?” Izzy asks gently, skipping over the implication that Clary’s husband is alive.

“He was something like what you are, a Shadowhunter. But that’s not what he was called. There wasn’t a name for what he was. And he came thousands of years before Jonathan Shadowhunter. Maybe he was a prototype, I don’t know.”

“So, they thought he was an abomination.” Alec says, like he already knows, like he’s sorry.

“Yes.” Clary whispers, eyes downcast as Raphael moves over to her, linking their pinky fingers together in a show of physical comfort.

It’s not much but it seems to soothe Clary, even as she keeps her gaze lowered.

Once she lifts her eyes again, Jace can’t help but frown at the bottomless pit of rage he glimpses in the green depths. It swirls in her eyes like a black hole, threatening to swallow her and everything around her.

And he knows, with a certainty he can’t explain and doesn’t even care to try, that it had almost swallowed her before. That she had barely been dragged back from the edge of the abyss, from losing who she is, and most likely, it was by the three men that are suddenly surrounding her, not touching but just standing near her.

“I’m fine, boys.” Clary tells them but they don’t back off at first.

They all seem to need their own separate confirmation that she’s actually okay. That she isn’t going to fall off the edge of that cliff, or throw herself from it, jump into all that rage and free herself.

Because she would feel free at first, but then, slowly, so slowly she wouldn’t realize it was happening, that rage would turn against her, turn into a prison that she wouldn’t, couldn’t, escape from.

Without thinking about it, Jace joins the other three. and , surprisingly, they seem to back away from Clary and make room for him. He nearly falters in his stride and Raphael, the youngest of the three, seems to notice and narrows his eyes. He seems unsure if Jace can be solid for Clary, he seems hesitant to trust him. He doesn’t seem to like him all that much.

Meliorn, on the other hand, is watching him like he’s done something interesting. Or like he’s interesting all by himself. It’s a little bit unsettling.

“Can I talk to you?” Jace asks Clary, not chancing a look at anyone else lest he lose his resolve. He needs to know, though.

“Okay.” She tells him easily enough, before turning away and heading towards the balcony that Jace had just barely noticed. He’s been too distracted by Clary. He’d known that but now he’s starting to see exactly how distracted he’s been and he doesn’t like it, not when he doesn’t even know why.

Jace moves to the low concrete wall and places his hands on it, looking out over the city. Clary seems to be trying to give him space but the balcony, while big, isn’t big enough for that. He can still feel her close and now they’re pretty much all alone. He can’t even hear the others in the living room, despite only glass separating them.

He figures it’s probably some kind of spell that Magnus put up to keep the sounds of the city out of his apartment.

“What am I to you?” He finds himself asking, it’s not his intention but it’s what comes out.

“What do you mean?” Clary asks and Jace nearly rolls his eyes.

“Don’t act dense, I know you’re not. You’re too old for that, for playing games.”

Realizing his voice has gone low and dangerous, he pauses, taking in a deep breath. He doesn’t want to fight with her.

“Is your husband alive?” He asks her before she can answer his first question. The answer to the first one won’t matter without the answer to the second one.

“It’s complicated.” She tells him as she moves towards him and he turns to face her.

“Complicated?” He asks with a frown. “Is he alive or not? It’s a pretty simple question.”

Clary stares at him for a minute, searching his eyes for something and he doesn’t know what. Has no idea what she might be looking for.

“Yes.” She finally answers and Jace wants to take a step back. He can’t explain, even to himself, why the thought upsets him. It shouldn’t, he doesn’t have that right. “But it’s not like you think.”

“Then what’s it like?” Jace asks her.

“He doesn’t know who he is.” Clary cries out, her voice thick with tears that he knows she won’t let fall. Not right now, not when they have other things to take care of.

“What?”

“He doesn’t know who he is and I can’t tell him. Even if I could, I wouldn’t. It’s dangerous, Ja-Jace.” She stumbles over his name and he wonders, for the briefest moment, if she had been about to call him something else. He doesn’t know where the thought comes from so he doesn’t hold onto it. “Every time he learns, every time we think we can be happy, we’re wrong. He dies. Every time. And the only way to stop that is to stop the Circle. To wipe them out completely so that they can never touch him again.”

There’s sorrow and venom in her voice, a strange combination. But it doesn’t stop Jace from moving closer to her and wrapping her up in a hug. She lets him, falling against him easily and wrapping her own arms around his waist.

Once again, they fall into that strangely familiar intimacy. It’s so easy and so right, to just pull her into his arms.

It’s even easier to ease back, to lift a hand to her face and cup her jaw. It’s almost too easy to lift her face so that she’s looking at him, to watch the green fade and be swallowed by black as her pupils dilate.

Her plump pink lips part and he leans down without thinking, just feeling, and presses his mouth to hers. It feels like a first kiss, like his first kiss. It’s like he’s never kissed anyone before. And it feels like a memory at the same time. Like he’s made to kiss her.

It’s soft until it isn’t, until it becomes hungry, as his tongue slides between her lips, twirling around her tongue. He kisses her like he’s trying to climb inside of her and there’s a growl low in her throat that he answers with one of his own.

They break away gasping when there’s a loud knock on the glass behind them as the doors to the balcony open.

Glancing over, Jace sees Raphael standing in the doorway, sort of glaring at them but not really looking at them, more glaring past them.

“They need you inside.” He says, glancing at Clary quickly before turning and walking back inside.

Clary looks up at him and he doesn’t know what to say, what to do. So he says and does nothing. Because her husband is still alive,somewhere out there, and Jace is pretty sure that he’s already half in love with her, if not wholly in love with her. And he doesn’t know how that’s possible but this can only end in pain and heartbreak. He’s pretty sure he knows that.

They head inside and Magnus is still flirting with Alec but Meliorn is smiling softly at Clary as she moves over to him and lets him put an arm around her shoulders and she leans into him, discreetly wiping at her eyes so that only Jace sees because he’s watching her so closely.

Yeah, this is going to be painful, he’s pretty sure.

*

Meliorn came into her life when he was still very young. He was drawn to the cycle of life and death around her due to his Seelie nature. Once she heard about his wish to become a Seelie Knight, she had taught him a few of her own tricks, learned over her long life, to use along with his Seelie training.

No longer Fiadh, but Reisa, she had been travelling through Europe, had been in London, when he had come into her life, running from his own enemies.

They had bonded and she had introduced him to Magnus, who, at the time, flitted in and out of her life at his whims but always kept in touch.

Meliorn had not been bothered by the death that seemed to surround her, to follow her. He was not bothered by the bodies left in her wake.

Magnus had started calling her “Aunt” when he was but a child and Meliorn had quickly learned the habit from him. It had not been long before they called each other “cousin”.

As she had lived the life of Reisa, she had continued her bloody and brutal hunt of anyone claiming the Circle and living by their code. And she had requested that Magnus not look for Jaka, that if he came across him to let him live his life peacefully.

Magnus and Meliorn had both protested but ultimately respected her wishes.

And so they had lived their lives, calmly peacefully, and for her, mostly lonely.


	10. Love In Me the Likes of Which You Can Scarcely Imagine, Rage the Likes of Which You Would Not Believe

The kiss plays on inside his mind as they make plans to talk to the local werewolf pack and see if they would like to join their fight against the Circle. Since it threatens everyone in the Downworld, Jace doesn’t see why they wouldn’t want to join.

It’s not like they’re asking everyone to fight. It’s strictly on a volunteer basis and they need people for more than fighting. They need intel.

“What about the Institute?” Alec asks Clary, standing next to her as they look over a hanging map of Brooklyn and its surrounding areas. “I know plenty of good Shadowhunters that would be more than willing to help. Especially considering that this is partially our problem.”

Clary looks up at Alec and Jace notices how his parabatai seems to tower over her. He towers over everyone, really, but it seems especially noticeable when it comes to Clary. Her presence makes her seem like she should take up more space.

The look she seems to be giving him is considering.

“From what I remember, Shadowhunters don’t follow orders well unless they come from their leaders.”

“Well, I’m the acting Head of the Institute.” Alec tells her, a bit of pride in his tone as his shoulders straighten and he clasps his hands behind his back. He looks a bit like a regal soldier, a strange combination to be sure.

But, Clary looks him over, tilting her head and crossing her arms as she seems to think about his leadership position and his offer.

“How well do you take orders?” She asks him and Jace almost laughs. Alec lives for orders, if they’re the right ones. But, above all, Alec lives for doing the right thing.

“I take them if the right person is giving them.”

“And if I hand the reins over to you, so to speak, so I could handle what I need to handle, would you let me do it? Or would you feel the need to rescue me if you thought I was in over my head?”

That comment shows how observant she is and how well she can read people.

“I have a hard time believing you could ever get in over your head.” Alec replies and Jace is surprised by that. He knows Alec hasn’t seen as much of Clary’s skills as he has.

“Okay. Well, before we invite anyone else in, I need to go get ready.” Clary says, patting Alec on the arm before moving around him and starting for the hallway that led to her room.

She glances Jace’s way and catches his gaze, nodding her head for him to follow her. He does, after quickly looking around to see if anyone was paying attention. He doesn’t even know why because he has no idea what she could want. Surely, it’s not going to be a repeat of the balcony kiss.

But, he could hope.

Except that Clary is married and Jace has never had much interest in sharing.

Still, he follows her down the hallway and into the room.

The door clicks behind him with a strange finality and he almost looks back at it to see if it’s still there, like the door had somehow disappeared, trapping him here with her.

“Did you need to talk about something?” Jace asks Clary when it becomes clear that she isn’t going to say anything. Instead, she’s pulling stuff out of the closet in the far corner.

“Yeah, I did.” She tells him without looking in his direction. “I do.”

She keeps rummaging through the closet, pulling clothes and things out and putting the clothes into two different piles. He’s not sure what each pile is for and he’s pretty sure he doesn’t care right now.

So, he does something that, under normal circumstances, he wouldn’t even think of doing, to anyone. He moves towards the closet and moves between her and the open door, taking the stuff from her hands and dropping it on the ground, uncaring of what it may be.

Taking a hold of her upper arms, he turns her away from the closet and walks her backwards until her knees hit the chair he’d noticed earlier. She falls onto the seat, his hands on her arms keeping her from falling too quickly and getting hurt.

Placing his hands on the arms of the chair, he looms over her, his jaw set, the muscle ticking, as she looks up at him with a glare of defiance. But she doesn’t fight him, doesn’t try to push him away or stand back up. She just glares up at him, her eyes like green fire and her jaw tilted up in an angry line.

“What did you call me in here for?” Jace asks her in a frustrated tone. To be as old as she is, he’s surprised to see the petulance in her.

Clary doesn’t answer him and he nearly growls in irritation.

“What do you want?” He asks her, raising his voice a bit, unable to stop himself.

“I want you to stay here.” She nearly yells the words at him as she pushes forward to stand up, moving past him as he stands there shocked.

Her back stays to him and she crosses her arms, nearly hugging herself.

“I want you to stay here when we go after the Circle.” She continues. “But I know you won’t. So, I was trying to think of a way to get you to stay behind.”

“Why?” Jace asks her. He doesn’t understand why she would want to keep him from this fight. Not when they need as many available bodies as they can get. Then a thought occurs to me, one that he wishes hadn’t, doesn’t want to consider it. “Do you not trust me?”

They both falter as she turns to stare at him, her eyes wide and tear-filled and her lips parted in shock.

“What?” She manages to whisper in a hoarse voice, her tone sounding hurt.

“That’s the only explanation I can think of. You already said that you don’t trust Shadowhunters.”

“Jace, that’s not-.” But he cuts her off before she can finish what she was trying to say.

“Truth.” He tells her as he steps into her space. “I just want the truth.”

Clary looks up at him and takes a deep breath before nodding.

“The truth is that I don’t want you to die. And if you go, if you don’t stay here, you might. You could die, Jace.”

“Clary.” He doesn’t know what to say because she barely knows him. He barely knows her. There’s this strange connection between them but they only met each other a few weeks ago and have only spent a few hours together when it’s all said and done.

“We need to meet the wolves.” She says, going to walk past him, back towards the closet. “And if you’re intent on going with us into this fight, you’re going to be well-armed and protected.”

And just like that, the conversation is over as Clary starts putting items on the bed, clothing and leather armor and weapons. Her own and some that clearly are made for a man.

It’s fairly easy to realize that the items she’s laid out for him belonged to her husband. Or would belong to her husband, because some of the items look modern and brand new.

Together, they start to get ready.

*

She was a recluse named Ainsley when she met Haydn. She tried to keep her distance, tried to rebuff him at every turn, sometimes fairly rudely. Yet, he had persisted. Again and again. Finally, she had given in.

And everything had seemed to be fine. At first.

It had been a long time since she had heard anything about the Circle. The last of their members had been driven underground, hopefully to never resurface.

Until they did.

Haydn had found her going through a trunk, filled with journals and pictures alike. Had asked what all of it was. And she had hesitated to tell him.

“Do you not trust me?” He had asked and she had broken, told him the whole story, all of it. Even when he did not believe, he stayed. Until he did believe, until he remembered.

A robbery gone wrong, that had been what was said at first.

Men had come into their home, vandalized it, attacked them.

She had known that it was no coincidence. If she had not told him, they would not have come.

Meliorn and Magnus had both told her that was a ridiculous thought. She wasn’t to blame.

But she had known the truth. It was no coincidence.

And she would not tell him again.

She would remain strong, she would remain separate.

She would let him live his life, if she ever found him again.

It was the only way to keep him alive.

She knew.

And she would not stop looking for the Circle again. She would not grow complacent.

She would end them all.


	11. If I Cannot Satisfy the One, I Will Indulge the Other

They need to present a united front, in more ways than one, when it comes to the wolves. So, he sits and watches in slight fascination as Clary, Meliorn, Raphael, and Magnus paint their faces. Then, Magnus turns to Alec, Meliorn turns to Izzy, and Clary turns to Jace.

At first, they’re all confused.

Alec seems to catch on first.

“Uh-uh. No.” His words should be firm but there’s a hint of laughter in his tone that stops that from being possible.

“You can wear as much or as little as you want, but it has to be something. We need to look like a cohesive unit when we meet the wolves. It’s the only way they’ll agree to helping us.” Clary tells them. “They’re very...together. And if they think that we’re not, they won’t get involved.

All three Shadowhunters resign themselves to their fate.

Izzy ends up with an inch thick blood red line going down the exact center of her face and the left side of her face is painted bone white. Her lips are painted a deep and dark, wine red on the right half. On the left, it looks like her mouth is stretched into a grotesque, lipless grin with sharp shark teeth. Her left eye is ringed in black, so deep it looks like an empty socket but for the eyeball rolling around in it.

The paint is so realistically done that Jace nearly flinches just looking at her. Izzy smiles as she looks in the mirror and the sight is disturbing.

Meliorn pulls her hair back into braids on the left side, leaving all that artistry bare. He weaves white and red string through her black strands.

Alec allows Magnus to draw thick black lines along his brows, cheekbones, and jawline, following it up with a grayish powder that makes his handsome face look gaunt. The lines are harsh enough to add an edge of anger and malice without Alec moving a muscle.

Jace has a raven painted on his face. It’s wings stretch over his eyes, over his brows, and graze his cheekbones. It’s tail fans over the bridge of his nose, it’s head rising proudly on his forehead.

Meliorn’s face paint accentuates the feathery leaf that he has on his cheekbone. Vines slide from the leaf and across his forehead and down the side of his face and throat.

Raphael’s face is painted to look like a skull but there are embellishments. Like swirling lines over his cheekbones and small dots around his eye sockets. The lines and colors are done just the right way to make him look wicked, as if he’s up to something and is more than willing to drag you down with him.

Magnus purple paint going in a band across his eyes, bisecting his face. His lips are painted purple as well and lined in deep black, just like his eyes.

And then there’s Clary. Her face is painted similar to Jace’s but her raven is more feminine in design, the lines less harsh and more curved. Her lips are painted black with jagged lines leading out from the edges, looking like her porcelain skin is cracking.

She’s dressed in black leather pants and a black t-shirt with a black leather vest over it. That same vest he’d seen her in that first time. And black, flat-soled boots, with laces and buckles that go all the way up and over her knees.

Everyone else is dressed similarly with Alec’s outfit having hints of blue, Izzy’s having hints of red, Magnus’s having hints of purple, and Raphael’s having hints of gold. Meliorn is wearing his Seelie Knight outfit but there are touches here and there that let him coordinate with the rest of them.

And Izzy’s boots have stiletto heels while the men have flat-soled boots that are just over their ankles.

Izzy, Alec, and Meliorn are carrying the weapons they would normally carry for their respective positions. Magnus, however, has two swords, one long and hanging on his hip, the other short, and strapped across his back.

Clary has two katanas strapped to her back as does Jace. They’re dressed and armed the most alike amongst everyone. And Jace knows that he’s wearing Clary’s husband’s gear, weapons and leather armour both. It all fits him well, perfectly actually, almost like it was made for him. It’s a bit unnerving to think of it that way, so he doesn’t. Instead, they all head out together, portalling to the docks near the Jade Wolf diner.

The alpha, Lucian Graymark, is already waiting for them. He’s got six wolves backing him, the same amount of people that Clary has at her back.

“Luke.” Clary says with a warm smile as she steps forward, clasping forearms with the werewolf. “It’s nice to see you again.”

“You, too.” Luke replies with a smile of his own. Jace hadn’t expected that. Hadn’t expected them to know each other.

Then Luke is looking over their group, his eyes staying on Jace just a bit longer than the rest, a light of interest sparking in his gaze.

“So, it’s really time to finish it, huh?” Luke asks with a somber tone that matches the frown on his face.

“And I’m hoping that you and yours would want to get some of your own back.” Clary replies easily, amicably. “I know what was taken from you.”

“I know what was taken from you, too.” Luke tells her, his gaze twitching to Jace for less than one second, not long, but long enough that Jace managed to catch it. And there’s something at the back of his mind that feels like it’s trying to move forward but it’s like smoke, as soon as he notices it, tries to catch hold of it, it disappears.

“And I intend to keep that from happening ever again. They’re all going to die, Lucian, with or without your help. I just thought you might like the opportunity to take your own pound of flesh.”

“You wouldn’t be wrong.” He tells her with a baring of teeth. “We’ll be there.”

“Good.”

With that, Magnus opens another portal.

They all go through but Jace is surprised when Clary grips his arm and they step out in an empty field on the side of a cliff. And they’re all alone.

“Clary?” He asks her, a hint of desperation in his tone. Because she could simply leave him here, on this cliff side, with no way to get back to Brooklyn, no way to join the fight. She’d said it herself. She doesn’t want him to fight. She doesn’t want him to die. And another conversation starts to fall into place inside his mind.

Her husband, dying over and over again. The Circle killing him because he was the original Shadowhunter before there were Shadowhunters. Her husband being alive. Her stumbling over his name. As if she were going to call him by another.

“Who am I to you?” Jace asks her once again and once again he sees tears gather in her eyes. Pain and sorrow and love.

Clary looks out over the field to where she can see the ocean beyond and the clear blue sky. Her tears don’t fall, even as she turns to him, grabs him roughly by the face and pulls him down while raising herself up.

She presses her lips to his in a rough kiss and he wraps her up in his arms pulling her closer. He can feel her pain through the kiss and it makes his own eyes well with tears.

Pulling back, Clary rests her forehead to his and keeps her eyes closed before whispering a plea of forgiveness.

“I’m sorry.”

*

Clarissa had met Raphael when Magnus saved the boy and brought him around. He’d been in so much pain that Clary had instantly felt as if she’d found another kindred spirit. And it had made her sad.

Once he’d gained control, she was glad that he could rekindle his relationship with his little sister.

It was not long before Raphael heard her story and really became a part of her small family. And he understood her need to stay far from any versions of Jaka, more than Magnus or Meliorn seemed to understand.

She had no idea why he seemed to get it better, but he did. It had brought them even closer.

And so, when Raphael had sent her word of possible Circle members being in Brooklyn and rogue vampires volunteering to be experimented on, she couldn’t do anything else but to go to him and help.

And if she got to kill a few Circle members in the process, all the better.

The thing she had not counted on was running into Jaka as she was fighting a small nest. And it was him and she was joyful. He was closer to her original Jaka than any other reincarnation had ever been, even his name.

Jace.

But, she had remembered her vow. Remembered her duty.

So, once she knew he would be okay, she had jumped through Magnus’s portal and collapsed in his living room, worn out from the fight and still full of rage that was slowly being tempered by her joy and her love.

He is here.

Her Jaka.

Her Jace.


	12. Whatever Is Done For Love Always Occurs Beyond Good and Evil

For one long, and heart-stopping moment, he thinks that she’s going to leave him on this empty cliffside, far away from the fight and any perceived danger. He can hear her intentions in her “I’m sorry.” and he grabs her arm before she can pull fully away from him.

Her head turns and she tries to look away but he pulls her towards him and cups her jaw in his hand, lifting her face towards his.

“Clary.” He calls so that she will lift her eyes from the ground and look at him.

Once she does, he stares into her eyes and lets himself feel the full weight of her gaze, the full weight of all of the years she’s lived coming through that gaze. And all of those years seem to settle somewhere inside of him.

He wants to ask her again what he is, who he is, to her. But he doesn’t. He knows now that she won’t answer that question even if he himself isn’t sure of the answer. He hopes but he isn’t sure.

So, instead, he just talks.

“If you love me,” Jace tells her, feeling the words deep in the marrow of his bones. “If you have ever loved me, do not leave me here. Do not go where I cannot follow. Do not make me lose you. Not when you are right here. I don’t know how, or why, but you are a piece of me. Do not make me lose part of myself, don’t take that choice away from me.”

By the end, he knows that he’s begging but he can’t seem to care. It’s true. He can feel it. He may not be able to remember her, or himself, but she holds a piece of him and he holds a piece of her and that’s just the way it is and the way it’s always been.

And he watches the resolve solidify in her eyes as she looks up at him, raising her hands and placing her clawed fingers on either side of his face.

“Do not die.” She tells him with a growl, teeth gritted against the pain the thought brings. “Don’t leave me to do this without you because I can’t. I have tried and I am tired. I will go mad and I will stay there without you.”

A portal opens and she holds his hand tightly as they run through together.

There’s fighting all around them, suddenly, and they get separated quickly but Jace isn’t worried as he cuts through the men in his way. He can barely see the landscape, doesn’t have the time to pause and get his bearings and check out his location.

Clary is cutting a bloody swath towards a group of Circle members that seem to be protecting someone. And just for a moment, he catches a glimpse of Valentine Morgenstern. Only, there’s something not right with the image. It’s like for a second he catches a glimpse of a man in a different time, wearing different clothes, and holding a stone dagger.

It makes him stumble, makes him hesitate, and he feels a blade cut his arm then his side. It’s not deep and Raphael is there next to him before he can blink, long fangs bared as he snarls at the Circle member, his skull face paint making him look like something monstrous.

Raphael grabs the man’s face, holding him by the jaw, as he lifts him into the air. He throws the man and Jace is surprised to see Meliorn waiting with his spear angled just right to catch the man and impale him. It’s a practiced and vicious move.

Then Meliorn moves his spear in a blur and the man is thrown to the ground, the spear removed and plunged once more into the man, this time into his throat.

“Don’t die.” Rapahel hisses at him and Jace is brought back from his daze, remembering his most recent promise.

Getting back into the fight, he doesn’t miss the fact that Meliorn, Raphael, and Magnus stay close to each other and somehow keep Jace, Alec, and Izzy inside the circle of them. He has no idea how they manage to do it but he doesn’t question it as they move closer and closer to Clary who is steadily moving closer to the Circle members guarding Valentine.

The fighting around them is dying down, the Circle members losing numbers by the second.

“No.” He hears Clary snarl as she comes face to face with Valentine at last.

“So, you do remember me, daughter.” Valentine says and their group falters the slightest bit, all of the Circle members around Valentine dead already.

They all look to Clary, their confusion clear on their faces. And Jace can see the pain in Clary’s eyes, the tears welling and finally, finally spilling over to run down her cheeks. She screams, a scream of rage and anguish and his chest hurts with the noise and then it all comes rushing back.

Jaka and the demon and Céibhfhionn. He remembers the lives in between then and now, the deaths.

“I remember you.” He whispers as he remembers rough rope wrapped over his wrists and ankles, men dragging him into the night. Emer with a fatal stab wound, dragging herself after him, screaming his name. Adrastos.

He remembers Magnus trying to save them both.

He remembers Meliorn.

And he watches as Clary, with another scream of rage and anguish, blood on her bared teeth and coating her clawed hands, he watches as she plunges both of her swords into Valentine, the strength of her rage lifting the man off of his feet.

Another scream and she twists the swords before ripping them free at an angle and letting Valentine fall to the ground. She drops her swords, tears pouring down her face as she lets out a guttural yell and pulls a small dagger, rushing Valentine, who is still on his knees.

One of her hands goes to his shoulder and the one holding the dagger plunges the blade into Valentine’s chest over and over again.

And he doesn’t know if she would stop on her own but he doesn’t take the time to find out.

Instead, he rushes forward and wraps his hands around hers, pulling her free from Valentine, wrapping his arms around her and causing her own arms to wrap around her torso.

They stumble to their knees and he curls over her as her body shakes and shudders with sobs and screams until, minutes or hours later, she’s all cried out.

“I remember. I remember. I remember.” He chants in her ear as she tilts her head back and rests it on his shoulder, the fight draining from her as their family stands around them, bloody and worn but victorious.

“Céibhfhionn,” he tells her. “I remember.”

*

The fight is...over. All of the time, all of the millenia she has spent waging war. It’s over. It’s done. She can finally find peace. It’s within her grasp. Peace and happiness. She’d honestly begun to think that she would never see it.

Clary had gone into this fight not expecting to make it out wholly intact. She had expected Jace, Jaka, to die, and she had expected to lose herself in the process.

Coming face to face with her father, a face she had thought she’d forgotten, the last face she’d seen before her first death, had been a shock. She had almost lost her nerve. But she didn’t. She finished it. And finally allowed herself to feel it all.

Somehow, they had all survived, more or less unscathed.

There were the wounded that they had to take care of, of course. And there was the clean-up. They burned everything.

She didn’t waste time asking the man calling himself Valentine why he had done any of it, she didn’t care. She didn’t want his reasons, she wanted his death. And that’s what she got.

Then there’s Jace. He remembers everything.

For the first time, he remembers everything and they are free. They are together and they are free. There’s no trace of the Circle that they can find. And they search, they do. But they don’t find anything.

Now, Clary is in her room at Magnus’s loft, Magnus having cleared out for the night to take Alec on a date, and Jace is with her. He’s looking over her journals and at the few trunks of personal treasures she’s kept over the years. He’s looking through his own things, the few things she’d managed to save and keep.

Without thought or hesitation, she goes to him and wraps her arms around him, laying her head over his chest and listening to his heart beating. His arms come up and around her, holding her tight as he presses his lips to the top of her head.

It’s been over a week since she killed Valentine and Jace hasn’t left her side.

He moves her back from him gently and she’s confused until his mouth is on hers roughly. A week and this is the first time they’ve kissed. She sighs into it, kissing him back with all of the passion she has ever felt for him, moving her hands over his chest and up into his hair.

His kisses turn biting as he spins them and starts walking her backwards towards her bed and she rejoices at the feel of him against her. It’s been so long.

Jace presses her down into the bed and they easily remove their clothes until only bare skin is touching bare skin. Once he is inside her he doesn’t move. They lay there, breathing and feeling each other.

Suddenly, Jace flips them over and she gasps at the sensation before settling back down and laying her head on his chest as he wraps his arms around her.

They’re as connected as two people can possibly be.

“I don’t know how you’re still alive after all this time, but I think I know why I kept coming back.” Jace tells her, him talking making his body do interesting things pressed to her and inside of her.

“Really?” She asks him in a whisper.

“That first time I died. When the demon killed me.” Jace sounds like he’s trying to remind her but that’s not something she’ll ever forget. “You were stabbed, too. And you bled onto me before I died. And I think that whatever keeps you alive, brought me back.”

Clary lifts up, looking down on him and considering his words as she traces the spot on his body, just under his sternum, where that first fatal wound landed. There’s a rune there now.

Before she can contemplate any further, Jace lifts his hips, lifting her and pressing himself further inside of her. She cries out and catches the edges of his grin before it starts to fade.

Later, tired and sated and still wrapped around each other, with him still inside of her, she will rest her hand over that spot and thank the universe for whatever was done to keep him coming back to her all this time.

And she vows to keep him with her always.


End file.
